Speaker 1: Are the ways that I am being right now today
Speaker 1: that take me away from the person, the partner, the
Speaker 1: loved one, the leader that I most want to be,
Speaker 1: welcome to, the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they fee their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us today. We are welcoming back. Susan David
Speaker 1: as a guest. She's a psychologist on faculty at Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School. She's the co founder and co creator of
Speaker 1: the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital and the CEO
Speaker 1: of Evidence Based Psychology. Along with speaking and consulting, Susan
Speaker 1: is also the author of many books, including Emotional Agility,
Speaker 1: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive and Work in Life. Hi, Susan,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hi. I'm delighted to be with you.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to have you on again. We don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of two time guests, we've got some,
Speaker 1: but you've joined an esteemed club, so welcome back. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We'll get into the rest of our conversation in a moment,
Speaker 1: but let's start like we normally do, with the wolf parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And they ran out her stops
Speaker 1: and she thinks about it for a second, and she
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandmother and she said, Grandma, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So thank you. I love
Speaker 1: the parable, and I think what it signifies to me
Speaker 1: is the two core aspects of my work, which is
Speaker 1: firstly emotional in agility, really meaning how people get stuck
Speaker 1: in thoughts, emotions, stories, ways of being auto partit that
Speaker 1: then stops them from bringing the best of themselves forward,
Speaker 1: and how they love, how they live, how their parents,
Speaker 1: and how they lead. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there's emotional agility, and emotional agility is the ability to
Speaker 1: be with ourselves in a way that's curious and compassionate,
Speaker 1: where we notice those difficult thoughts, emotions and stories, but
Speaker 1: ultimately we are able to navigate them effectively the skills
Speaker 1: of emotional agility so that we can bring the best
Speaker 1: of ourselves forward and live in ways that feel values
Speaker 1: congruent and values aligned wonderful. What I'd like to start
Speaker 1: is with something you just said there for a second,
Speaker 1: which is about autopilot. And as I've been reflecting on
Speaker 1: what it takes to live good life, well lived life,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's occurred to me is that
Speaker 1: it's the ability to actually know what's going on inside
Speaker 1: of us that is so important. It's always kind of
Speaker 1: amazing to me how much we can be struggling inside
Speaker 1: emotionally with our thoughts and not even be aware of
Speaker 1: what's happening. And so I'd like to kind of talk
Speaker 1: about how can we go off autopilot? What are ways
Speaker 1: of remembering, you know, remembering the practice principles of emotional
Speaker 1: agility or of any other type. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a great way to start. So firstly, when I think
Speaker 1: about autopilot, I think about autopilot in our actions. So
Speaker 1: these might be habits that have become part of our
Speaker 1: day to day life, but that actually don't reflect who
Speaker 1: we want to be. Um An example might be that
Speaker 1: value family, you value presence and connectedness, and yet you've
Speaker 1: got this habit and the habit is you always bring
Speaker 1: your cell phone to the table, And this is this
Speaker 1: precious opportunity with your family, but you squandering it through
Speaker 1: a habit that you might not even have reflected on.
Speaker 1: We can also get into autopilot in other ways. We can,
Speaker 1: for instance, have thoughts, emotions, stories, this internal world where
Speaker 1: we auto pilot respond to difficulties. And so some examples
Speaker 1: of that might be you feel underminded work and so
Speaker 1: you just automatically shut down, or your husband starts in
Speaker 1: on the finances, and so you leave the room because
Speaker 1: the conversation feels uncomfortable. Other ways that we can get
Speaker 1: stuck in our thoughts, emotions and our stories is you know,
Speaker 1: I feel sad, and I feel like I don't want
Speaker 1: to get out of bed, and so I don't or
Speaker 1: I really want to put my hand up for this job,
Speaker 1: or you know, even engage in a level of intimacy
Speaker 1: with someone that requires me to be vulnerable. But I've
Speaker 1: been hurt in the past, and so my auto pilot
Speaker 1: is to put up the protection. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the first ways to start thinking
Speaker 1: about how to get off the hook or get off
Speaker 1: the auto pilot is for us to think a little
Speaker 1: bit about what we value, you know, what it is
Speaker 1: that we value because of course, you know, our emotions
Speaker 1: and our thoughts and our stories are really helpful to us.
Speaker 1: We need them. We need stories because they help us
Speaker 1: to make sense of the world and understand what. You know,
Speaker 1: we should tune into our need to tune into my
Speaker 1: daughter crying, but not tune into the washing machine. And
Speaker 1: so stories are really important ways that we make sense
Speaker 1: of the world around us. Emotions are really important, critical
Speaker 1: signaling functions and thoughts as well, But when we go
Speaker 1: onto autopilot, we're letting those drive us. And so really
Speaker 1: important way of getting off autopilot is recognizing that we
Speaker 1: own our emotions. They don't own us. And so, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, to your question, which is how do we
Speaker 1: even start doing this, a really important aspect is simply
Speaker 1: about thinking, you know, about our values, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: are there ways that I am being right now today
Speaker 1: that take me away from the person, the partner, the
Speaker 1: loved one, the leader that I most want to be? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, do I value fairness and yet I'm avoiding
Speaker 1: that difficult conversation because It's a tough one to have,
Speaker 1: and therefore I'm being unfair to the person or to
Speaker 1: the rest of my team. Do I value presence and connection?
Speaker 1: And yet my autopilot is leading me away from that?
Speaker 1: And so I think one of the first ways we
Speaker 1: can you know, move off the hook, and there are others,
Speaker 1: of course, but is to just give a little bit
Speaker 1: of space to thinking about our values. And this is
Speaker 1: away from this school momsh um, you know, almost scolding
Speaker 1: orientation that values often have. And it's more, you know,
Speaker 1: connecting with the heartbeat of who do I want to
Speaker 1: be in the world, and that can be profoundly important
Speaker 1: for us, right right, there are a few things I
Speaker 1: think that are as important as knowing what our values
Speaker 1: are and then being conscious about how we carry them
Speaker 1: into the world. You know, another phrase that people will
Speaker 1: use with this as you know intentions. You know, what
Speaker 1: is my intention as I go into this conversation? What's
Speaker 1: my intention as I sit down to this meal with
Speaker 1: my family. I think the more often we can reflect
Speaker 1: on that, the much better chance we have of not
Speaker 1: being on autopilot. Definitely, And I think also, you know,
Speaker 1: it goes into this idea that values often feel very abstract,
Speaker 1: but that values are actually qualities of action. So you know,
Speaker 1: in the same way as you riding a bike, and
Speaker 1: the only way you keep being able to say, in
Speaker 1: the same way as you're riding a bike, and you
Speaker 1: can only stay stable as you move forward as you
Speaker 1: move your feet. The same with values, which is that
Speaker 1: you know, every day we are invited by life two
Speaker 1: engage with what I call choice points. You know, a
Speaker 1: choice point might be do I pick the muff in
Speaker 1: order I pick the fruit cell phone at the table
Speaker 1: or not? When my partner stands up to embrace me.
Speaker 1: At the end of a day, do I embrace back
Speaker 1: or do I shut down? You know, these are these
Speaker 1: choice points. And if we can think about the idea
Speaker 1: that values our intentions and they are also qualities of
Speaker 1: action that are invited of us hundreds of times every day,
Speaker 1: we have more opportunity to live into those values. I
Speaker 1: love that idea because so often this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: value sounds very abstracted, you know, like, oh my, my values,
Speaker 1: as if they're these these things that sort of stand
Speaker 1: outside of our life. And that's not the way it's
Speaker 1: intended to be, and that values are very often practical.
Speaker 1: Like I often say to people, sometimes your value is
Speaker 1: what you planned to be doing that moment, your daily
Speaker 1: plan that you sat down and you thought about, like
Speaker 1: what you were going to do today, and when like,
Speaker 1: that's a reflection ideally of your values. And so if
Speaker 1: you're asking yourself, well, what do I value here, you
Speaker 1: can look, you know, sometimes to that plan because it
Speaker 1: ideally is reflecting some value that you had when you
Speaker 1: thought about what was important with how you spend your time.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I recently started a podcast with
Speaker 1: Ted Cale checking in with Susan David and one of
Speaker 1: the people that I interviewed on the podcast does James Clear,
Speaker 1: who has written this beautiful book Atomic Habits. And James
Speaker 1: described it so beautifully, which is this idea that our
Speaker 1: actions are votes. When you act, you are casting a
Speaker 1: vote for the person that you most want to be.
Speaker 1: You know, it's this idea that your actions are what
Speaker 1: you've got on your to do list, and the way
Speaker 1: you move of being yourself forward is actually a vote
Speaker 1: for your identity and for your values. I agree. I
Speaker 1: often when I'm talking with people about the coaching program
Speaker 1: is that you know, essentially, what we're trying to do
Speaker 1: is simply identify what's important to you, what really matters
Speaker 1: to you, and then find ways to pull that through
Speaker 1: into all the aspects of your life. And if you
Speaker 1: can do that, if you can identify what's really important
Speaker 1: to you and then you can live by that, that's
Speaker 1: a successful life. You have to have both those components.
Speaker 1: You have to spend the time to think about what's important,
Speaker 1: and then you actually have to live according to it.
Speaker 1: If you have one versus the other, it's a lopsided equation.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and you know. What you're saying here
Speaker 1: also just reminds me a little bit of your earlier
Speaker 1: question in the conversation, which is, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we get off autopilot and how do we stop? Then,
Speaker 1: you know, begs the question how do we start identifying
Speaker 1: what our values are? And I think this is really
Speaker 1: critical because you know, this idea that our emotions are
Speaker 1: either good or bad, positive or negative is pervasive in
Speaker 1: our society. So society seems to really laud this idea
Speaker 1: that we've got to be positive, we've got to be happy,
Speaker 1: good vibes. Only you know, whatever positive thoughts you have,
Speaker 1: they manifest. And really a lot of my work challenges that.
Speaker 1: A lot of my work is really focused on this
Speaker 1: idea that all emotions, including and very often especially the
Speaker 1: difficulty emotions, actually signpost the things that we care about.
Speaker 1: So if you're feeling guilty as a parent, and you
Speaker 1: imagine guilty written on a piece of paper, then if
Speaker 1: you turn that piece of paper over and you ask
Speaker 1: yourself what values is this difficulty emotion pointing to the
Speaker 1: values might be values of presence and connection. And if
Speaker 1: you're feeling grief, that grief is often a signpost of love,
Speaker 1: love looking for a home, you know, love inviting you
Speaker 1: to remember and to be able to think of that
Speaker 1: person and special times together. And so our difficulty emotions,
Speaker 1: rather than being things that we should manage and control,
Speaker 1: are actually signposting often what we care about. And I
Speaker 1: think that when we then open up to our difficulty
Speaker 1: emotions with this level of curiosity, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the function of this emotion, What is its signaling to me?
Speaker 1: What is it trying to tell me about what's important?
Speaker 1: Often what will come out of that is greater clarity
Speaker 1: about what our values are. And you know, often the
Speaker 1: dissonance that we feel in our life is because things
Speaker 1: are going against our values. But again, we in so
Speaker 1: day to day mode that we might not have even
Speaker 1: you thought about it. So I think this is really
Speaker 1: really important because what it really speaks to is this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, our emotions contain very important data
Speaker 1: about who we are and what we want to be doing. Um.
Speaker 1: The caveat to that, of course, is that our emotions
Speaker 1: are data, they are not directives. Just because I feel
Speaker 1: guilty doesn't mean I'm a bad parent. Um. Just because
Speaker 1: I feel bored at work, and it might be signaling
Speaker 1: that I value growth doesn't mean that I need to
Speaker 1: our go and resign from my job here and now.
Speaker 1: So our emotions are data, not directives. We own our
Speaker 1: emotions that own us. We can learn from them, but
Speaker 1: we don't need to be driven by them. I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to hear you talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: how to suss out when our emotions are a valid
Speaker 1: indicator of a value, of a direction, or they are
Speaker 1: a habitual pattern of guilt is a great one, right,
Speaker 1: because there's lots of guilt that is really useful, right, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel guilty because I let's use your example, because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm spending more time with my cell phone
Speaker 1: than I am with my children, and I don't feel
Speaker 1: good about that. I want to change that. That's a
Speaker 1: valid use of guilt, right. But we also all know
Speaker 1: people who carry around a per evasive sense of guilt
Speaker 1: that they inherited from who knows where. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: we talk about you know, um, Catholic guilt or Jewish
Speaker 1: guilt or the guilt trip that our mother put on us.
Speaker 1: And so you can have the same emotion in one
Speaker 1: hand that is really pointing towards something that's a value,
Speaker 1: and then you can have the same emotion. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, that maybe an old way of viewing the
Speaker 1: world that's not really helpful for us. So how are
Speaker 1: we able to sort of tell the difference between those things?
Speaker 1: So this is a really important question. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of pointers that I will give. The first is
Speaker 1: that when we are experiencing a difficulty emotion. Of course,
Speaker 1: as you note, you know a lot of emotions have
Speaker 1: these functions, they're signaling something. But sometimes we can get
Speaker 1: stuck in believing the emotional the story as fact. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, you might have grown up in
Speaker 1: a family in which you know on your mental chalkboard
Speaker 1: in grade three was the story that you are not
Speaker 1: good enough and that in order to protect yourself you
Speaker 1: need to close into yourself and not give, because when
Speaker 1: you give, you are punished for giving. You know, when
Speaker 1: you are vulnerable, you are punished for that vulnerability. And
Speaker 1: so that story and even those emotions and even that
Speaker 1: way of being might have been completely functional to the
Speaker 1: child that you once were. Um it protected you, and
Speaker 1: it helped you to be in a context that wasn't
Speaker 1: a context of your choosing, and you learned how to
Speaker 1: navigate that effectively. And then what happens is, as you
Speaker 1: become an adult, you start reflecting on the fact that
Speaker 1: you feeling lonely. You know you're feeling lonely, and that
Speaker 1: part of your loneliness is about this being closed off.
Speaker 1: And so now this story that at one point was
Speaker 1: functional actually now is taking you away from the kinds
Speaker 1: of relationships that you might want to have. So I
Speaker 1: think there are a couple of really important aspects to this.
Speaker 1: The first is that you know, no single emotion in
Speaker 1: of itself is a signpost to the fact that you
Speaker 1: need to change your life. Of course, because emotions are transient,
Speaker 1: you know, emotions again are data, not directives. But when
Speaker 1: we experience our emotions time and time again and they're
Speaker 1: signaling something to us, a really important question to ask
Speaker 1: of ourselves is is my believing is my believing the story?
Speaker 1: Is my believing this emotion? Is it actually leading me
Speaker 1: to shut down into my life and to be small
Speaker 1: or is it enabling me to thrive? And what we
Speaker 1: know is that the litmus of whether something's helpful or
Speaker 1: not is this idea that these emotions are there for
Speaker 1: a purpose. But as soon as we become hooked into
Speaker 1: them as soon as we are responding, reacting, being living
Speaker 1: based on the dictates of that emotion as opposed to
Speaker 1: the dictates of our values. That's when we know that
Speaker 1: that emotion is you know, maybe a carryover that is
Speaker 1: not helpful to us anymore, you know, or that story
Speaker 1: is not helpful to us anymore, and we need to
Speaker 1: start shifting it. And so the ways that we can
Speaker 1: do that shifting, we can firstly bring compassion to ourselves.
Speaker 1: We need to be able to be compassionate. We need
Speaker 1: to be able to when we feel the guilt or
Speaker 1: the sadness or the grief, we need to be able
Speaker 1: to show up to that emotion with compassion. You know,
Speaker 1: this is tough. This is tough. What you're going through
Speaker 1: is tough given the experience that you had when you
Speaker 1: were a little uh, this is a tough feeling or
Speaker 1: it's a tough story. So we need to be compassionate.
Speaker 1: We need to also be able to be curious with ourselves.
Speaker 1: The only way we really begin to understand whether you know,
Speaker 1: the emotions are signaling values or whether they are too
Speaker 1: too strongly and and that's not helpful to us, is
Speaker 1: by being curious you know, I'm not stuck in the emotion,
Speaker 1: but I'm starting to say, what is this emotion trying
Speaker 1: to tell me? What is this emotion trying to shine
Speaker 1: a light on? And that's very different from being, Oh,
Speaker 1: I feel guilty, therefore I must be guilty, and I
Speaker 1: feel terrible about feeling guilty. It's like, huh, you know,
Speaker 1: what is this guilt trying to signal to me? And
Speaker 1: so now you can see that orientation is very different.
Speaker 1: You're not stuck in the emotion. You are more observing
Speaker 1: the emotion and various strategies that I can share if
Speaker 1: they would be helpful about how we move from that
Speaker 1: place of showing up to our emotion to being able
Speaker 1: to learn from our emotion and understand our emotion better. Sure,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great place for us to head to. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think the first thing is really hearing yourself
Speaker 1: when you describe your emotions. So, for instance, very often
Speaker 1: people will use big descriptions to label what it is
Speaker 1: that they're feeling. So someone, for instance, might come home
Speaker 1: from work and say, you know, I'm stressed, and everything's
Speaker 1: about I'm stressed. I'm stressed. I'm stressed, and of course,
Speaker 1: there's a world of difference between stress and disappointment, or
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety, or stress and I feel unseen. So
Speaker 1: what we know from psychology is there's this whole body
Speaker 1: of research and so I've found some lar in my
Speaker 1: work which is called emotion granularity. And it's essentially that
Speaker 1: when we move beyond this big umbrella term of something
Speaker 1: like stress, and we start trying to label the emotion
Speaker 1: more accurately. You know, what are one or other two
Speaker 1: or three ways that I could instead of calling this
Speaker 1: thing stress, what are other ways that I could describe
Speaker 1: this emotion? This is incredibly simple, um you know, in
Speaker 1: that it's a simple strategy or simple idea, but it's
Speaker 1: actually profoundly powerful because what it helps us to do
Speaker 1: is to start understanding are the thing that I'm causing
Speaker 1: stress is actually that I feel unseen? And so when
Speaker 1: you say that, it's starting to help you to identify
Speaker 1: the cause of the emotion and also what you might
Speaker 1: need to do in response to it. And I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example from a giant, which is that many
Speaker 1: years ago, I worked with a client who would often
Speaker 1: describe himself and his team, you know, everyone was angry.
Speaker 1: So he would say, you know, I'm so angry about
Speaker 1: what's going on at work, and my team's just angry
Speaker 1: with me. And I started to encourage him, like what
Speaker 1: else could you be feeling? And what else could your
Speaker 1: team be feeling? And you know what he identified for
Speaker 1: himself was that he was feeling a bit of fear.
Speaker 1: It was a new role for him, and that actually
Speaker 1: what his team was feeling was maybe a lack of
Speaker 1: trust because again, this person was in a new role
Speaker 1: and that had a difficult experience with a previous manager.
Speaker 1: So you can see how this accurate labeling completely shifts
Speaker 1: the posture of the interaction. Now we're not I am
Speaker 1: angry dealing with angry people. It's I am feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit of fear here, and I'm dealing with a
Speaker 1: team that needs to trust me. And so how then
Speaker 1: I go about having those conversations, or how have my
Speaker 1: meetings or how I interact becomes very very different. And
Speaker 1: you know what was really interesting is I was very
Speaker 1: good friends with this client, and a couple of months
Speaker 1: later we went out for for lunch and his wife
Speaker 1: came as well, and she said to me that this
Speaker 1: had completely changed their marriage because he would come home
Speaker 1: from work and he would set to her it seems
Speaker 1: like you're just angry with me, and she would be
Speaker 1: I'm not angry, I'm tired, or I'm not angry. I
Speaker 1: just need to be acknowledged. And so it's a very
Speaker 1: simple but extraordinarily powerful strategy to start pling our emotions
Speaker 1: more accurately. It starts to gain signpost our values and
Speaker 1: what's important and who we want to be. So that's
Speaker 1: one strategy. Another strategy, and of course what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here is how do you move beyond getting stuck
Speaker 1: in your experience to using your experience fruitfully and acting
Speaker 1: in ways that are values aligned. So a second way
Speaker 1: that we can do this is by observing when you
Speaker 1: say something like I am stressed, I am angry, I'm frustrated,
Speaker 1: I am sad. You can see linguistically that what we're
Speaker 1: doing is we are identifying all of us with that emotion.
Speaker 1: I am one of me is stressed. You know all
Speaker 1: of me? Um, I am one hundred of me, all
Speaker 1: of me is angry. Now, you are not your emotion. You,
Speaker 1: as we've explored in the podcast already, are more than
Speaker 1: your emotion. You are your values, your intentions, your choices, you,
Speaker 1: your wisdom, you your courage. You are so much more
Speaker 1: than your emotion. But when we say I am, it's
Speaker 1: a linguistic trap that then imprisons us. So you know,
Speaker 1: we can start using and it's it's almost like a
Speaker 1: mindfulness technique, but the strategy of just noticing your thoughts,
Speaker 1: your emotions, and your stories for what they are. They
Speaker 1: are thoughts, emotions, and stories. They are not fact. So
Speaker 1: I'm noticing the feeling that I'm being undermined. I'm noticing
Speaker 1: that this is the thought that there's no point. I'm
Speaker 1: noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story.
Speaker 1: When we do this, we're still acknowledging the thoughts, emotions,
Speaker 1: and stories, but we are creating space in ourselves, recognizing
Speaker 1: that these are data sources, not definitions of who we are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that I think is often one of the most
Speaker 1: fundamental shifts that we can make, is that is to
Speaker 1: get that little bit of space, and that little bit
Speaker 1: of space calls for some degree of like you said,
Speaker 1: some degree of awareness. We suddenly shift from being immersed
Speaker 1: in it or you know, drowning in what's happening, and
Speaker 1: we're in a different relation to those things. Those things
Speaker 1: are still there, but our relation to them is so different. Correct,
Speaker 1: You know, we can't read the instructions while we in
Speaker 1: the jaw. We need to be able to get out
Speaker 1: of the jar and then observe the jar. And you know,
Speaker 1: when we stuck in our difficulty emotions, we are often
Speaker 1: in the jaw. And you know, another aspect of this is,
Speaker 1: you know, really, what I'm talking about here when we
Speaker 1: get stuck in this way is I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: language that I use in my book Emotional Agility and
Speaker 1: in my TED talk is that we're brooding on our emotions.
Speaker 1: We're treating these emotions as fact, we are immersed in them.
Speaker 1: But of course, you know, people can do the opposite.
Speaker 1: People can instead of brooding on their emotional experience, people
Speaker 1: can bottle them. And bottling is when you push them aside,
Speaker 1: you rationalize them. You say, you know, I shouldn't feel
Speaker 1: that I should be grateful for what I've got. You know,
Speaker 1: many people would give anything to have those jobs, even
Speaker 1: though I'm bored. I shouldn't, you know, focus on that
Speaker 1: we bottle our emotions when we judge ourselves for having them,
Speaker 1: because again, we live in a society that tells us
Speaker 1: that happiness is somehow the thing that we should all
Speaker 1: be doing. And so what this can lead to is
Speaker 1: when we feel difficulty inside of us, when we feel
Speaker 1: that loneliness or grief, we can start saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't, I shouldn't feel that at and so we
Speaker 1: create an internal hustle with ourselves. We struggle with ourselves. Really,
Speaker 1: what emotional agility is is it's neither about brooding on
Speaker 1: our emotions, nor about bottling our emotions. Rather, it's about
Speaker 1: engaging with these inner experiences with compassion and curiosity, and
Speaker 1: very importantly also with courage, because sometimes we're facing into
Speaker 1: an emotion that actually tells us that things aren't going well,
Speaker 1: that this job or this thing that you've invested your
Speaker 1: life in doesn't actually have a good chance of success,
Speaker 1: or it's not something you want to be doing any longer,
Speaker 1: or that a relationship isn't working out. And that's painful,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a painful realization. And so the courage
Speaker 1: is the part of us that notices these but then
Speaker 1: faces into ourselves with a sense of recognition that we
Speaker 1: need to make changes or that we need to shift things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes even small shifts so that they are more values congruent.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes people will describe a thought as a feeling. I
Speaker 1: feel that you don't appreciate me. Is that an emotion
Speaker 1: or is that a thought? Because I think sometimes this
Speaker 1: gets a little confusing, And how do you tweez the
Speaker 1: two apart so that you're dealing with them in the
Speaker 1: right context. Yes, so that's a really important question, and
Speaker 1: it's one that psychologists don't even agree on, which is
Speaker 1: often think of this as being a fairly simplified way
Speaker 1: of describing it. You know, it definitely doesn't capture the
Speaker 1: nuance and certainly the conversations that happen in the emotional
Speaker 1: literature about it. But you know, one way of thinking
Speaker 1: about this is that emotion is really a very often
Speaker 1: a physiological experience that we have. It might be those
Speaker 1: butterflies in your stomach, or the put or the tightness
Speaker 1: that we feel when we're anxious, and it's very often
Speaker 1: that physiological sensation. A thought is very often in our heads.
Speaker 1: I wish he didn't say this, and I'm planning on
Speaker 1: saying that, And it's that like monkey mind that we
Speaker 1: think about. A feeling is very often the combination of
Speaker 1: the two. So a feeling often combines an emotion and
Speaker 1: a thought. You know, I have got a feeling here
Speaker 1: that you don't have my back, and that might both
Speaker 1: be the thought that I've had, which is that I've
Speaker 1: noticed that you don't stand up for me, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a cognitive experience that I've had, um but I've
Speaker 1: also had the emotion of disappointment or anxiety. And so
Speaker 1: very often a feeling is this experience of a combined
Speaker 1: emotion and a thought and an interpretation that come to
Speaker 1: play together in the way we then view the world.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense to me, and I
Speaker 1: think it can be helpful to take the feeling, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it can be helpful to deconstruct those two parts, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking this, and there's this emotion that's here, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's not quite as overwhelming when I separated
Speaker 1: into its constituent parts. I often describe it as like
Speaker 1: it's a big ball of yarn. And when you can
Speaker 1: deconstruct it a little bit, you can look at it
Speaker 1: a little bit more clearly, it doesn't feel so heavy. Definitely, Definitely,
Speaker 1: it's very helpful because what you're starting to do is
Speaker 1: you starting to tease apart your experience and then your
Speaker 1: assumptions and interpretations of that experience. Yes, exactly, So I'd
Speaker 1: like to change directions just for a moment here, and
Speaker 1: I would like to talk a little bit about dealing
Speaker 1: with difficult emotion in times of uncertainty. Obviously, we are
Speaker 1: in a time of uncertainty right now. When we release
Speaker 1: this show, we'll still be in a time of We're
Speaker 1: always in a time of uncertainty, but but sometimes feel
Speaker 1: more uncertain than others, and and uh, this is certainly
Speaker 1: one of them. I don't know what the state of
Speaker 1: the world will be when this gets released as far
Speaker 1: as COVID nineteam, but I'm sure we'll still be feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, a fair degree of after effect of it,
Speaker 1: even if we're and if we're past the worst of it.
Speaker 1: In what ways does any of this advice change when
Speaker 1: we are in times of uncertainty? Or there are particular
Speaker 1: things we would like to emphasize more during times of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a wonderful question. I think that
Speaker 1: there's nothing that we would change, but there are things
Speaker 1: we would emphasize more. The first thing that we would
Speaker 1: emphasize more is compassion because it's really interesting and sad.
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy that in the shadow of so much illness,
Speaker 1: death and uncertainty, we are seeming to be faced with
Speaker 1: never ending demands or suggestions on social media saying things like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you didn't use quarantine to dust of
Speaker 1: your screenplay or write a new book or you know,
Speaker 1: become a star baker. You know, it's not that you
Speaker 1: didn't have the time, bits that you lack discipline, and
Speaker 1: so you know, really there is so much focus, even
Speaker 1: in tragedy, on humans as doing rather than being, and
Speaker 1: on the invitation to compare and self criticize and self judge.
Speaker 1: And now is not the time for self criticism. Now
Speaker 1: is the time for self compassion because every single person listening,
Speaker 1: you know, whether this is still quarantine, after quarantine or
Speaker 1: in six months time, every single person is doing the
Speaker 1: best they can with who they are, with what they've got,
Speaker 1: and with the resources that they have been given in life.
Speaker 1: And it's really important to extend this compassion to ourselves
Speaker 1: and to others and to others because we don't know
Speaker 1: the narrative or the experience that someone who buys more
Speaker 1: toilet paper than they need. As an example, you know
Speaker 1: what it is that is driving that for that person.
Speaker 1: So I think just being compassionate is really important. Another
Speaker 1: thing that I would say there is acceptance. Acceptance. Gentle
Speaker 1: acceptance is foundational to our ability to get through complex times.
Speaker 1: So what I mean by gentle acceptance, you know, gentle
Speaker 1: acceptance is not the same as passive resignation. Is what
Speaker 1: it is, There's no point, There's nothing I can do. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just no point in even trying. Gentle
Speaker 1: acceptance is not a feeling of hopelessness. Gentle acceptance is
Speaker 1: really this idea. It is what it is. It is
Speaker 1: what it is. And so example of gentle acceptance might
Speaker 1: be you walk outside and it's raining, and gentle acceptance
Speaker 1: is g it's reigning. Not gentle acceptance is it's raining,
Speaker 1: and I wish it weren't raining. What does it always rain?
Speaker 1: Just when I think that I'm starting to get things together,
Speaker 1: starts raining, like you know, And and so when we
Speaker 1: start doing this, we start engaging in a lack of
Speaker 1: gentle acceptance. We really are fighting with the world, you know,
Speaker 1: we are fighting with the world. And I really notice
Speaker 1: in the work that I'm doing that. People's suffering is
Speaker 1: directly proportional to how much they try to fight the world.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's a real power in recognizing
Speaker 1: that the city can only be rebuilt when you stop
Speaker 1: bombarding it. We as human beings can only start making change,
Speaker 1: whether that change is getting our resume together because we've
Speaker 1: lost our job or you know, self care because we
Speaker 1: are completely burned out. That change can only come about
Speaker 1: when we face into the reality of our situation with
Speaker 1: gentle acceptance. Because here's the paradox that acceptance is the
Speaker 1: prerequisite to change. It's only when we face into the
Speaker 1: world as it is, not as we wish it to be,
Speaker 1: that we are then able to move forward. So that's
Speaker 1: another thing I'd focus on. And then the third is
Speaker 1: I've already spoken to this, but I think now, even
Speaker 1: with the temptation to keep thinking about, you know, what's
Speaker 1: the silver lining and what's the good part of this
Speaker 1: and how can we be positive, everyone is going to
Speaker 1: be experiencing different kinds of emotions. These emotions are going
Speaker 1: to be ongoing, probably for months, if not years beyond
Speaker 1: the experience, and those emotions will be both things like
Speaker 1: the experience of um relief, having reset, maybe even having reprioritized,
Speaker 1: a sense of growth that might come out for us,
Speaker 1: but it also will be aspects of feeling stressed and
Speaker 1: grieving traumatized, because by definition, very often our experience of
Speaker 1: trauma is that our view of what the world once
Speaker 1: was has now been shattered, and so show up to
Speaker 1: those emotions. They are expected. Your emotions have evolved to
Speaker 1: protect you, and if there was ever a time when
Speaker 1: we are under existential threat, it's now. So if you're
Speaker 1: feeling tough emotions, don't judge them or push them aside.
Speaker 1: See if you can end the struggle with yourself by
Speaker 1: dropping the not telling yourself you can't have them or
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have them, but just noticing them, labeling them,
Speaker 1: understanding them, and being kind with them. Wonderful. Well, I
Speaker 1: think that is a great place for us to wrap
Speaker 1: up this conversation. Thank you so much, Susan for coming
Speaker 1: on again. It's been such a pleasure talking with you.
Speaker 1: I've loved connecting and chatting. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. You are very welcome. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly
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